Martyr
by TheCivilState
Summary: Walking away was easier than the thought of destroying her.  Finn/OC


_You would find me each hour the same_ _She is tomorrow, and I am today_

There was something so permanent about being a vampire. Something so unchangeable and it was maddening. One would suppose if humans were capable of changing during their short lifetime, then a vampire could certainly change of centuries.

To some degree they could. Hair, clothing, speech, language, accent, name. Change the physical, the exterior. Form new memories to paint over the old ones. But still, at the base, near the spine and biting at the heart… they were the same. He was the same. No amount of new paint could change that.

_If right is leaving, I'd rather be wrong_

Finn's decision had been easy to make in the moment, with his bloodlust so close to taking over and forcing him to rip Aria's heart from her body. It had been easy to retreat into the forest with his family and leaving her and her golden hair and light eyes a distance memory of the past. It was easier in the moment to bury her in his mind rather than be forced to bury her in reality. But now, with the urges under control and his lust sated for now, the decision was not the easiest to make.

"Finn, come away," Rebekah urged him, hand on his arm trying to pull him back into the world his family had created with their new abilities. A nightmare. A nightmare they reveled in and he despised. He shook her away like one shooed a fly, his eyes never leaving their target.

Aria, impossibly beautiful in her age, was tending to the garden they had spent tireless hours into together back… just back. Back when things were different and he was a man and still very much capable of loving her. Just back.

"Finn-"

"Go Rebekah," he said, "I'll be along." He would. That was an understood truth about him. He would leave to seek out Aria and carefully watch her from a safe distance, but he would always return. His family was a force he could not resist, the same as Aria. Finn was waiting for the day he would be split down the middle. Leave the monster to his family and return the man to Aria.

_If loving her is a heartache for me_ _And if holding her means I have to bleed_

_Come in, _she would whisper in the lonely nights long after Ivan had grown and moved away with his own family. They were many miles away and rarely visited Aria who refused to leave the house she had slaved over to turn into a home. No one ever returned to the village his siblings had massacred. The bones of their victims protruded from the earth and their ghosts haunted every crevice. They left Aria alone same as they had done in life. She was perfectly alone; even the dead did not want her. Save for him.

On the nights she asked him into her home again, dreamily as she slept, he would sit in the corner of her room in a chair she had pushed into the corner years ago and had never moved. He would sit and watch her chest rise and fall and listen to the sound of her beating heart. On occasion, when he was braver than he'd ever been, he would reach out and touch her hair, tracing the golden lengths that created patterns as they sprawled across her bed. Her skin glowed from the warmth of the sun it absorbed during the day and over the years, permanent laugh lines had formed around the corners of her eyes and mouth. He did not think at the time, back when he was just a man, she could ever be more beautiful than she was at the time. A young woman coming into her own. How could anything be more beautiful than that? And yet now, worn with time and the stress of raising a child not her own, Aria had become the epitome of beauty. How he wished he could keep her with him forever. But he couldn't. Time didn't work like that for humans.

_Then I am the martyr_

"Are you certain of your decision?" It was a question his mother asked often to begin with, but with more frequency the closer to the ceremony they came. Time had always flown with such swiftness, but now, so close to an eternal demise, Finn found it moving much faster. Faster than he could outrun. Not that he would. Instead, Finn was running towards it headlong with arms opened wide. Finally, after centuries of torment trapped in a coffin with only his memories, Finn was able to greet death the way he had always planned to: at the end of a very long, well-lived life. Now if only Aria had been there to join him in the end.

"Yes mother," he said, "I have always been certain." Esther smiled and patted his cheek lovingly. He was always such a good and moral boy and at times, she often wished there was a way to spare him and kill the others. Someone as good as Finn did not deserve the life that had been thrust upon him.

As Esther busied herself with herbs, Finn watched her carefully as she moved through a world she had been dead to for a thousand years. It was moments such as these Finn found life even more unbearably cruel. His mother who had turned them into monsters had been brutally murdered by Niklaus, yet managed to walk among them again. Why could Aria, so impossibly beautiful and pure of heart not be granted the same privilege as well?

Perhaps she had. Perhaps she did not wish to return to him.

_She lives in a daydream_ _I don't belong_

"We're leaving, Finn." This time, it was Elijah who came to his side and tried to pull him away from Aria. She was basking in the sun, her skin and hair glowing and he desperately wanted to reach out in the daylight and touch her the way he would at night. He didn't want to be a dream or simple imagining to her anymore. He wanted to be real and tangible. He wanted to step out from the trees and have her run into his arms. He wanted to kiss her and make up for all the years he should have been kissing her, as his husband, as he had always wanted to be and had planned to be before his mother turned him into a monster. Times like these he wished he had not been the favorite son. Perhaps she would have left him as he was- human.

"Finn," Elijah said, but he did not pull at his arm the way Rebekah had. Elijah, hopelessly devoted to a woman who had chosen Klaus in the end, understood what it was like to leave behind a beloved. So he stood silently at his brother's side and willed him the courage to walk away.

"You cannot return to her world," he said, "And you would not be so cruel as to bring her into ours." The eldest brother, forever the protector of them all, stepped away and left Finn to decide. But there was no decision to made, there never had been one. Finn was a creature of the night and Aria was very much a child of the sun. To pull her away from that would be cruel. It would destroy her.

Walking away was easier than the thought of destroying her.

_She is the sunlight_ _The sun is gone_

**a/n: **Pretty sure this is when a) everyone fell in love with Finn and b) when they all started crying over Finn.

Fave, flame, faint.

_[song fic inspired by "She Is The Sunlight" by Trading Yesterday]_

_oxox_


End file.
